Readings From The Monster Manual
by DarkDragonDave
Summary: A series of one-shots pitting Negi against some of the classic monsters of Dungeons and Dragons fame. Will he live when facing some of these legendary creatures? Will he make his saving throws or will he roll a natural one?


**Disclaimer:** I hold no claim to anything presented within. Negima is property of Ken Akumatsu and the monster presented within is property of Wizards of the Coast.

**Authors Note:** The idea for this came about when I was thinking about matching up Negi against various D&D monsters. A lot of them would probably eat him. Not that I don't respect the Negiverse but I don't think he'd fair well against a rampaging Balor or Pit Fiend. And let's not think about what a Great Wyrm Red Dragon would do. And Mahora might not make it through a Tarrasque attack. Anyway, I've fought a few of the monster presented within and thought it would be a nice challenge.

**A Word About the Monster Manual from Chamo: **_The Monster Manual. It isn't just a handy book to have for Dungeons & Dragons, you know aniki. In fact, the one here is a knock off of a similar book from the magic world. The monsters within are some of the most well known monsters, spoken of by many mages. Some are feared and others are seen as a minor inconvenience. There are fantastic monsters ranging from the simple goblin to the fiercest of dragons. So you should look that book over and familiarize yourself with them because you never know when one might attack you._

**Eye Tyrant**

**By Dark Dragon Dave**

Negi and the rest of Mahora sleeps soundly, unaware of what is going on underneath them, deep beneath the cold hard earth. At roughly 3 a.m. an earthquake strikes the school grounds. It is a minor one, but it still causes a spot in the ground in the main plaza of the student thoroughfare to weaken. There isn't going to be much that will cause it to collapse. Say, the weight of a certain ten-year old boy and one of many 15 year old girls, after a number of people have traveled over it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's Saturday morning and that doesn't stop the heavy traffic from walking about all cavalier on the surface. You'd think they live there or something. Negi is heading out for a day of training with Ku-Fei but he doesn't realize he isn't going to get that training done on time; instead Ku-Fei and the boy are going to be fighting a monster. Negi eats his breakfast and says his goodbyes to Konoka, Asuna, and Chamo. Chamo elects to stay behind that day because he heard some of the girls had gotten new panties and he wants a preview. Priorities are priorities, after all.

Negi meets up with Ku-Fei before they head for an open area to train. The two of them chat as they walk to their usual open spot.

"We had earthquake last night," Ku-Fei mentions.

Negi had neither heard about nor noticed. "We did?"

"Yes. It minor. I only know because I awake at time," Ku-Fei explains.

"It must have been small, because there was no damage and no one woke up."

"It barely register to me."

They are in sight of the spot and don't take note of the slightly displaced paving stones that are along their path. They both step on to the spot and it takes a second for them to realize that they are now traveling down and not forward. The paving stones had given way and dropped the two into a vertical shaft that ended up dumping them into an underground lake. Several stones follow them into cold groundwater. The ripples of the water soon die down and the room falls into silence.

Negi finds that he is unable to breath. Nothing but cold water surrounds him. His staff has gotten free and he needs to retrieve it before anything else. No wait, what about Ku-Fei, is she okay? After panicking for a bit, he decides on the staff first because it's the closest to him. Blurrp! Just got to reach out… Running out of air… Blurp! Blurrp! With a fair bit of dexterity he gets a hold of his staff. Bluurp! He desperately swims to the surface. Blurrp… Just a bit more… Blurrp! Blurrp!! Why is it taking so long?!

Negi breaches the surface first and takes a series of deep breaths. "Uuuuuuuuuhhh!!" he inhales. "Ku-Fei?!" the boy shouts as he keeps himself afloat. He's still gasping for breath.

Ku-Fei comes up, soaked and gasping for breath. "I here."

They swim to shore and check to see if the other is okay. "Too bad we can't dry off, we'll catch cold," Negi says. He can see her clothes clinging to her skin. Involuntarily, at seeing the shape of her body, his face turns red.

"We fly to surface?" Ku-Fei asks. And as if on cue, the hole to the surface collapses, dirt piling up where they had come from and blocking off the light from the surface. "Guess no."

Though they should be enshrouded in darkness there is a dim light, offering hope, from farther down of what must be a cave.

"We might have a way out," Negi offers his thoughts on what the tunnel must be.

They make their way through the dark enshrouded tunnel and out into a poorly lit underground cavern. There were small braziers on all sides, little alcoves of burning material offering up small amounts of light. The light is still low, even with all the fires in the cave. There is a walkway, which they are standing on, that leads to the top of a larger tower like structure. The two make their way out into the open of the top of the tower. Light streams down from above, signaling a possible way out.

"There we go," Negi says to Ku-Fei and points up.

"Is good." Ku-Fei smiles.

Negi gets his staff ready to fly and… nothing. Not even the tiniest but of lift. Negi gets flustered because there hasn't been a time when it didn't function. But it happens to all men at some point. "Why won't you lift?"

"Something wrong?" Ku-Fei asks.

"I can't fly. I can feel the magic working but nothing is happening." He places the staff back on his back. "There has to be some reason for this."

"(That reason is me!)" A phlegm clogged voice shouts in its native tongue. The language itself sounds like slobbering and there is a lot of spittle while it speaks.

Both Ku-Fei and Negi look around. The voice echoes throughout the cavern, preventing its location from being discovered. A green ray fires off and strikes at Ku-Fei. She effortlessly dodges it. The two of them can just make a shape out in the shadowy illumination provided. It, from what can be seen, was a large… orb. Very large. Why it must be about eight feet across in diameter (2.4384 meters). It bobbled about and moved into a shadowy spot.

"Why can't I use my magic?" Negi wonders. He gets too wrapped up in thoughts to notice the red beam coming at him.

Ku-Fei knocks him out of the way and dodges another green beam coming towards her. "Watch out, Negi-bozu!"

Negi hops back as he falls to his side. He watches the orb float down below the top of the stone tower.

"Don't stand close to edge," Ku-Fei advises. "You may get bitten."

Negi can feel the magic returning to him. "Come on Ku-Roshi, quickly." He gets on his staff and lifts up. Ku-Fei hops on and begins the ride up.

Without getting far, it is as if gravity decides that this is an affront to its work because Negi and Ku-Fei fall back down to the ground. They both roll and avoid getting hurt.

"Graaah!" The orb reappears behind Negi and opens its gaping maw.

"Aaah!" Negi shouts and ducks out of the way.

The sound of the monsters teeth snapping together make an audible _clack!_ Ku-Fei lands a massive punch on the side of the creature, forcing it to wobble about and shake itself as it lurches forward. There are ten tentacle-like things sticking out of it like the snakes of a Medusa. From the end of one a red beam fires off. Ku-Fei quickly dodges.

"**Ras Tel Ma Scir Magister!**" Negi recites, but the orb turns to face him. He feels his magic sputter out under the gaze of the monster. The orb closes its middle, and only visible, eye. Negi feels his magic return again… Just in time to get blasted by a weird white ray. Negi's mind becomes foggy, as if maybe he'd taken to many blows to the head. "What… was I doing?"

"Negi-bozu! You need to watch out!" Ku-Fei shouts.

Negi looks at Ku-Fei "Oh, hey how's it going?"

Ku-Fei runs towards Negi and kicks the incoming orb in the side of… itself. "What wrong with you?"

"You're cute," Negi comments and giggles a bit. "I wanna kiss you."

"White ray," Ku-Fei says while turning red and taking a stance against the orb, "make Negi dumb." The orb elects to fade back into the darkness. Ku-Fei takes this moment to slap Negi. "Come out of it."

Negi shakes his head. "What's going on? Wait! Now I remember." He looks around. "Where is it?"

"Over there!" Ku-Fei points to the last place she saw it.

Negi feels his magic return. A red ray comes from off to their left. Ku-Fei and Negi do a combo dodge. The red ray strikes the ground and leaves a crater, not from an explosion mind you; the ground it strikes just fades away.

Once again Negi attempts his release. "**Ras Tel Ma Scir Magister-**" But quickly finds himself without magic. "What is going on?" It is now that his training dawns on him.

* * *

"Today students," the teacher in front of the class says, "we're going to study aberrations, and more specifically, the aberration known as a Beholder."

"One of the most important things for a mage to remember is that from its central eye, a Beholder emits a 150 foot (45.72 meters) cone of anti-magic. Which means that all a Beholder has to do is look at you, and that puts you in a dangerous spot… However it only works when the eye is open and it cancels out its own magic."

Negi jots this information down in a note book.

* * *

Negi realizes this is a bad spot to be in and he hopes he isn't facing an actual Beholder. "Ku-Roshi?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to depend on you far more than I should during this fight. But I promise we will get out safe."

Ku-Fei shakes her head. "No need worry about me."

Negi feels his magic come back again. This is a good indicator. "Move!" The two of them split up to avoid the ray that comes their way. Ku-Fei makes a backflip as another beam comes her way almost at the same time as the first one.

Negi takes off on his staff and flies as fast as he can towards the orb. He gets to it fast enough to land a fly-by kick in on it. Quickly turning, it bites his leg in response. Negi is no longer able to fly and hanging by his leg from the mouth of what he can clearly see is a Beholder. It seems to be grinning. Whether or not this is because it has a ten-year old boy hanging from its mouth, or if it is truly smiling, is unknown.

"I your enemy now!" Ku-Fei shouts. She jostles loose a large chunk of the tower and hurls it at the Eye Tyrant. The Beholder drops the useless child in favor of dodging the rock. The boy falls as the rock slams into the wall and then follows the boy.

Negi uses this opportunity to not become close personal friends with the ground. He lifts up into the air and rides his staff back to the top of the tower. The rock continues down and strikes the ground with enough force to shatter it.

Ku-Fei is nimbly dodging rays while Negi puts space between him and the ground. He lands on the edge of the tower to see the martial artist slamming her fist into the creature's middle eye. It doesn't seem to be doing that much good as the orb simply floats back in response.

* * *

The teacher continues the lesson on the terrible monster.

"A Beholder's eye is one of the hardest parts of its body. It has such an amazing control of its iris that it can see how many flies are sitting on an apple at 300 ft. (91.44 meters)" The class mutters in surprise.

"The inside is the most alien part of a Beholder," the teacher says. "All Beholders organs remain buoyant even removed from the body for a period of up to 12 hours, unless one were to use a 'Gentle Repose' spell on it. However keep in mind that necromancy is frowned upon in the magic community except in certain cases such as this, in which knowledge could be gained from the study of organs preserved as such. You'd still need to be licensed for such things."

* * *

"Keep it up Ku-Roshi!" Negi shouts. With the central eye closed he can cast his magic.

Ku-Fei nods and delivers a strong kick to the beast's central eye. It lets out a shrill scream and lashes out with its sharp teeth to see if it has a "taste" for women like her. She ducks it, turns around, and gets a hold on it. "Got you." Her hands have firm grasps on a couple of bony plates attached to it.

"(Not very likely,)" it says and tries to lift her in the air.

But she leverages it up, over, and behind her. It lands with a hard smack into the ground. The blonde stands up ready to take it down if necessary. The Beholder just lays there. Drool flowing out of its mouth and slowly pooling on the ground under it.

Ku-Fei looks on for a few moments before asking, "We done here?"

"Let's go while we can," Negi says.

Ku-Fei looks at the boy with his shredded pants and bloody leg. "We leave now and get you fixed up."

Ku-Fei and Negi rise up on the staff to the light source streaming down from above. They get so close to the exit they can see that it's a room of some kind. What? The young boy is about to maneuver out of the cave when gravity has its way with him again. He plummets back down, his magic useless as he heads towards the incoming tooth-laden sphere.

"I will not let you have the upper hand, erm… eyestalk… against me!" Negi becomes a part time physics professor as he uses the mass of both him and his martial arts instructor, and the force of gravity, to put a little impact into his leg. He sticks it out, ready to kick this Beholder in its face.

"Graaaah!!" The Beholder is definitely out for blood this time. Spit runs down its sides as it rises up through the air. What light comes in glints off the saliva orbs that trickle behind it in a sick wave of fluid. It is waggling its tongue in anticipation of the tasty treat it is about to receive.

The gap between the two parties grows shorter and shorter. Negi soon finds Ku-Fei's leg beside his own. The two collide with the Beholder. Negi connects with its teeth and Ku-Fei gets it in the eye. The boy uses the temporary reprieve to prevent himself from becoming one with Ku-Fei, as a nice red splatter mark on the ground. He gives the staff enough lift to land safely.

"I think the only way out of here is to kill this beast," Negi says.

"Is okay by me," The blonde martial artist tells him.

The two take a stance against the lone orb. It floats into the streaming light and lets out a powerful roar. It fires off two more beams. One at Negi and one at Ku-Fei. They both get hit. Negi with a green beam and Ku-Fei with a blue ray. The boy feels his allegiance change. Perhaps the Beholder is right in its desires. The twinkle in his eye fades as his thought turn to helping the Beholder destroy the human girl. Ku-Fei on the other hand is racked with pain. It feels like she went a few rounds with a fighter with a little less skill than her.

The Beholder laughs a creepy guttural laugh.

Ku-Fei looks at Negi to see if he is okay. She's used to her position, since she's a fighter. Negi turns to face her with a strange look on his face. "Negi… bozu?" she asks.

"**Ras Tel Ma Scir Magister,**" Negi recites and then follows up with, "**Undetriginta Spiritus Lucis! Sagitta Magica! Series Lucis!**"

Ku-Fei, despite her injuries from the blue beam, runs to Negi while dodging his spell, and knocks him down. "What wrong with you?"

The Beholder flies in, closes its eye, and tackles her with everything an eight foot wide, free floating, orb can. It continues to feel something resembling resistance. A good look later reveals that Ku-Fei hasn't budged. She angles a kick on it and knocks it back. As it flies back, it moves an eyestalk around and fires off a black beam and it ends up scraping her. The cold grip of death tries to wrap her in its loving embrace, chilling her heart nonetheless. With a burst of fortitude she shakes it off. Negi comes in to try an elbow against her, but she knocks it clear and slaps Negi hard.

Negi cranes his head back slowly, a saddened look on his face. "That wasn't very nice." He tears up.

"I sorry, Negi-sensei," Ku-Fei apologizes.

"Baka!" Negi shouts and tries another attack on the blonde. She deftly pushes it away from her and slaps Negi again. Bringing his staff around she knocks it from his grip and stomps it to the ground. It slaps the ground underneath with a loud _thwack_, kicking up some dust as it strikes. Negi moves back and waits for her to make the next move. The Beholder shoots the staff with a fuchsia ray. It removes itself from under her foot and flies into the mouth of the Beholder. Like hawking up a chunk of phlegm, it spits the staff out in front of Negi.

"Aaagggch… Ptoo!" The staff is covered in vile Beholder saliva. Negi reaches down and more than willingly grabs the nasty covered staff.

Negi spins it around quickly, spit flying around in a circle, splattering everywhere. The staff reports as he taps the end of the staff on the ground, knocking the last of the spittle off. Ku-Fei dosen't like this, having to fight her teacher/pupil and this monster. It isn't that she can't, it's that she doesn't want to face him in this manner. It seems the green beam has charmed him.

Hmm… Physicality doesn't work so perhaps… She didn't feel right thinking of this. She liked him, but still… Settling on the plan, she runs in, avoiding the rays from the eye stalks. Negi is incanting another spell. With a fair bit of courage she placed her lips on his, kissing him right there in front of the giant eye orb.

Something in Negi's brain starts snapping back to reality. There is something inherently not right with this. His morals as an English gentleman will not let this happen. They eventually fully reinstate themselves and he shoves himself back. "Ku-roshi?! Why did you do that?!" he asks in embarrassment.

"You acting weird. Could not slap you out of it."

"I was? Last I remember we were facing the Beholder."

Speaking of the Beholder, it's not like it was watching this going "Odey odey dur dur dur." The orb fires off two more rays. This time it's a green ray to Ku-Fei and a yellow ray at Negi. They both dodge instantly. Ku-Fei dodges in a manner that allows her to run to the orb at top speed after landing and kick it a good one.

"Keep it up, Ku-roshi!" Negi encourages. He can feel his magic return. There had been something that happened from when he faced the Beholder and when Ku-Fei... Well anyway, it's far more vital for him to concentrate on the here and now then on the past. Let's see, it was a green ray… "Charm spell." He mutters to himself.

"It already floats so a wind spell might only knock it about. They are not very combat oriented despite their looks. We're both faster and more mobile…" He snaps his fingers. "My only option..." While Ku-Fei continues to pound on the Beholder, Negi incants, "Septentriginta Spiritus Lucis Coeuntes Sagittent Inimicum! Sagitta Magica! Series Lucis!" Numerous arrows fly forth from his hand and head for the Beholder.

Before it can move its eye to give the arrows a good look, Ku Fei rushes in and wallops the Eye Tyrant a good one. With the change in place, the arrows angle themselves so they will not strike the martial artist. Distracted, the Beholder roars at her, slobber splattering her as its vile breath rushes past.

"Baka…" she tells it and hops back out of the way.

"Urh…" comments the Beholder on its current situation.

Light surrounds the monster and rips through the thick plates, shredding the beast, its blood spraying a fine mist. Yelping in pain, it dies and falls to the ground. It lays there, saliva still running from its mouth as the aberration's tongue rests on the ground underneath the massive corpse of it is attached to.

"It a great opponent." Ku-Fei bows to it in a show of respect to the monster. "Had we been separated, we would not have stood a chance."

Negi sits on his staff and asks, "Ready to go?"

"Yes. We still have training today," Ku-Fei reminds her pupil."After you get healed."

Negi nods, smiles, and says, "Of course."

They lift up to the top of the cave, higher and higher until they reach the hole in the ground. It's large enough for one person to get through. They peek their heads up from the pit. Just a hole in the ground... in the middle of an empty room. An empty room with barriers around it and bright lights pouring down.

"That's lucky," says Negi and maneuvers his staff so Ku can climb out first. "Though... why is this room here?

She offers her hand to him so he can leave. The boys weight is nothing to her as she cranes him up and out. "I no worry."

"We should tell the Headmaster of what happened."

The blonde girl nods in agreement.

* * *

With that, the hole is sealed after days of pouring dirt into it. The corpse of the Beholder is dealt with by a group of mages licensed for necromancy. For the next few days after that incident, the number of men and women dressed in black outfits increase in number. Its body is removed in the dead of night, the night of the day it died, hauled away to who knows where, for who knows what reasons.

Ku-Fei and the young Mr. Springfield train like they had planned and no one at Mahora is any wiser of the happenings underground.

**Eye Tyrant: End**

**Afterthoughts: **Well what did you think? Originally this was planned to simply be a one-shot. However, I got to thinking about matching up Negi and "X" number of girls against various other monsters of _Dungeons and Dragons_ fame so it evolved into a series of one-shots. So if Negi or anyone dies, they'll likely be back the next chapter. Also, don't expect this to be updated quickly as this is an every now-and-again project that will never take priority over _Femella Intra Machina_. Final note, I am basing this off of the 3.5 ruleset as I am not motivated enough to purchase 4.0. (That and I started formulating this shortly after work began on the first chapter of _Femella Intra Machina_.)

**See you again with a new monster!**


End file.
